Word: vanadium
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With test tube and spectroscope, the metallurgists reconstructed a revealing picture of arms-making inside the Axis countries. The Germans started the war with meager supplies of copper, nickel, molybdenum, vanadium, chromium, manganese-all considered vital for war. They showed great skill and ingenuity in finding workable substitutes. As early as 1934 they began to make shell cases of copper-coated steel instead of brass (which uses more copper). As war ate up their copper stocks, they shifted to electrolytic copper plating (a thinner coat), finally to a rust-retarding lacquer coating containing no copper...
...hunters are 350 U.S. geologists. They have bagged millions of tons of war-critical ores. WPB has just scratched aluminum and zinc off the list of U.S. shortages. Copper may soon follow suit. The Government now knows of big U.S. deposits of manganese, vanadium, tantalum and chromite-not one of which was produced in quantity in the U.S. before the war. Already the nation can produce most of its own chromite and tantalum (crucially important in a secret war job). The hunters have also discovered 3,000,000 tons of high-grade bauxite (for aluminum), new sources of tungsten, magnesium...
...counts upon Mexico for 45% of its requirements of graphite, 33% of its antimony, 40% of its sisal and henequen, 19% of its lead, a growing portion of its lumber (particularly mahogany, for plywood planes), plus important fractions of its needs for molybdenum, mercury, cobalt, manganese, mica, tungsten, tin, vanadium. This year Mexico will ship the U.S. some 400,000 tons of these metals alone; next year the figure should rise to nearly 2,000,000 tons...
...Most vanadium used in the U.S. has been imported from Peru and Southwest Africa. Now vanadium can be extracted from Idaho phosphate deposits. Hitherto this has been impracticable because Idaho's 6,000,000,000 tons of phosphate rock contain only 500,000 tons of vanadium, a mere one-tenth to one-fourth of one per cent vanadium. This concentration would be too low for practicable extraction, were it not for the fact that Anaconda Copper Co. is already processing over 100,000 tons of phosphates a year as fertilizer. From this tonnage some 200 to 250 tons...
Essentials of the complicated new process for extracting the vanadium: the phosphate rock is dissolved in sulfuric acid; then nitric acid is added to precipitate the vanadium in powder, then cake form. This will be marketed to alloy-steel makers as vanadium pentoxide...